Windows Hanging (Not Responding)

wesimmo

wesimmo

wesimmo

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Spec is as per my sig, on a Gigabyte UD5H.

PSU is a Corsair GS700.

I've also got 2 OCZ SSDs, one for Windows and one for Steam / Origin and a Toshiba HDD.

Windows was regularly hanging, programs (mainly Firefox i noticed it in) would give me Not Responding, i could move to another application but as soon as i did anything that would also go to Not Responding and i could not get task manager up until after everything resumed, which it would do after about a minute.

I did a complete re-install of Win 7 Home Edition and then all the chipset drivers from the MOBO install disc which removed a few exclamation marks that were showing in device manager for the USB controllers.

It's now even worse, every 7/8 minutes..

I've tried removing RAM, downclocking CPU and GPU (temps all fine though, currently 20s across both cards and all 4 cores), Prime 95 will run fine with temps in the 60s even at 4.4ghz.

I have noticed that i'm getting ATAPI error ID 11 in the event log every time it occurs, which is a controller error on \Device\Ide\IdePort4, but much googling has yet to help me ID what the problem is.

It's driving me bloody crazy, fairly sure it's that which is causing both FC3 and BF3 to crash with a horrible buzz from the speakers too.

Please, if anybody has experienced this, how did you fix it?
 
When you re-installed windows on your ssd did you make sure all other ssds and hdds were unplugged? I installed windows 8 on an ocz agility 3 with all other drives attatched and it took ages too boot, i re-installed it with all other drives disconnected and it flys now, sub 10 seconds, maybe a coincidence i dont know but it might be worth a try mate
 
Thanks, the HDD "shouldn't" be on it's way out, it's only 3 months old and barely used.

I'd just unplugged the DVD and HDD SATA cables anyway, and it's still happening.

Next thing might be to swap the SSD cables.

After that plug them into the Marvell ports rather than the Intel, though hate the Marvell ports as they then give the option to "Eject" any drive connected to them....

edit: 2 more posts while i was replying...

Yeah, you have to unpug all the other drives while installing Win 7 else it won't let you install to the formatted SSD.

Will reset the BIOS next as that doesn't involve unclipping all the cable ties to change the SATA cables!
 
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I did, i just won't let you install Windows on that newly formatted drive if there are other hard drives of any type plugged in for some reason.

I think that is a known fault with the install software?
 
you should unplug all other drives anyway just have the drive you want to put windos on installed,once windows has installed then add in your other drives(it wont mess up the boot order that way)

only use the lan driver off the motherboard cd,then go on gigabytes website and install the latest drivers and bios

then enable x.m.p for your memory in the bios
set cpu vcore voltage response to fast and manually set 100 bclk
 
OK, finally found some time to play around some more.

I managed to get the thing more stable, i kept the CPU overclock at 4.4 with a few more volts and ran the GFX at stock.

I had a few hours on Far Cry 3 with no issues.

But then i tried to OC the graphics cards and couldn't get the voltage slider on Afterburner to go above 1.158 (or something close to that).

I could use the power limit slider though and set that to +20.

I then overclocked and could run Heaven and 3dMark no problem, but within a few seconds of Far Cry 3 starting and a cut scene running i got a complete lock up.

I noticed though that card 1 was still reporting voltage of 1.158 whereas number 2 was going to 1.21.

I swapped the cards round in the slots and then AB would allow me to set the voltage to 1.21, which card 1 (previously card 2) was then reported as pulling, but now card 2 was still only getting 1.158.

Therefore it seems that one of my cards is limited in the voltage it will take. I've also tried swapping the PSU cables round in both configurations and it is definitely the card that is the problem.

I'm going to see if the system is more stable with the cards in this config, the theory being that card 2 (the "dodgy one") won't get used in desktop mode, only when i'm full screen gaming and XFire kicks in.

Does it seem likely that this voltage thing could be my issue, and why would it be doing that?
 
Jesus, this PC lark is tricky with a 2 year old and working away a lot but finally made some more progress....

Ok so the voltage thing above appears to be an Afterburner issue, a full driver wipe and removal of Afterburner and then using GPU Tweak has got the voltages being reported correctly at least.

I then messed about with the overclocking in GPU Tweak and the system appears to be massively unstable when i overclock the Memory.

I'm currently at 1050 on Core and 1100/4400 on the memory and the hanging has pretty much gone away. But as soon as i start increasing the memory clock the hanging starts again.

I've played hours of Far Cry 3 in the last week with the current settings with no issue at all.

So i guess i have a poor card or cards for overclocking the memory and that is just the lottery of silicon?
 
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